


Remembrance

by Chu



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Break Up, Love, M/M, Missing, New World, Post SBURB, Romance, Sorrow, remembering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-20
Updated: 2013-03-20
Packaged: 2017-12-05 23:02:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/728885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chu/pseuds/Chu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The moment Dirk remembers everything changes his life forever and throws out more questions than he has easy answers for. But what about Jake? Is there any chance of remembrance?<br/>Post Sburb sort of dealio. My take on it.</p><p>“Jake. I'm Dirk. How're things?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remembrance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [akitsu_47](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akitsu_47/gifts).



> A collaboration born from the minds of myself and my amazing friend Akitsu-47 who has a link to this fic, and the accompanying picture posted on her tumblr of that same name.  
> See end note for art!  
> Inspiration : Iris by the Googoo dolls.  
> Take a listen while you read? :)  
> It is uncertain as of yet, but a follow up chapter might be on the horizon!

The first time he saw him he was able to pick out the scruffy black hair without even needing to try. He'd been walking home from work, the day was nice and he had had a late start so it didn't seem necessary to take the car. A negligent glance off to the side was all the discovery had taken. One moment Dirk was ambivalently observing the quarrels of a couple at a crossing and suddenly there he was. He was across the street and caught up right in the middle of a large group of people, laughing, smiling and clearly enjoying himself. They were walking quickly away and there was absolutely nothing to be done about it. Equally, there was nothing to be done about, or to prepare him for the wave of feelings that crashed into him like a fucking tsunami. It was, how do even describe it? It was like something completely new, something right out of a book or a story, or one of those shitty rom-coms.

It was just exactly the moment that all of those corny lines you get in love songs and power ballads try to teach you would be there. 

Eyes meeting across a crowded room while your heart systematically leapfrogs over every other beat while attempting to clamber up out of your throat. During this whole cardiac circus act a whole troop of caterpillars that quite honestly you have no recollection of ever consuming suddenly take make the moment theirs and erupt into an even larger mass of jittery fluttery little fuckers flying all about your stomach. One of those moments, the kind no one ever expects to actually happen, and this one caught Dirk up in a strangle hold that quite simply wouldn't quit. The feelings wouldn't let him go, wouldn’t let him move and would barely let him breathe as he stood, frozen to the spot, an unwillingly willing observer of an event that was going to torment him for the next few months in ways that during those torturous few seconds he was utterly unable of realising, let alone comprehending and understanding.

It had all happened in a moment. One single moment. In fact the very moment that Dirk's eyes had fallen on him for the very first time. The second those orange eyes found their target everything became clear. Everything that had been foxing and confusing him, dancing tantalizingly at the edges of recollection for his whole life, staying just out of reach while offering him the barest little hints of what the meaning behind the elusive yet ultimately enticing images could actually mean. They followed him in his dreams, both sleeping and awake. If his mind was allowed to wander they’d be there. Vivid colours, strange smells, scenery that was like nothing on earth, nothing possible... Strange creatures, skeletons and other demonic forms would lash out and claw at him, jolting him awake in an instant. He could never quite untangle the seemingly ever changing riddle that followed each one of these illusions before it disappeared into insensibility.

This time however the blast of pure recollection almost shocked the senses right out of him, shaking him up and causing him to stop dead in his tracks. There was no teasing trickle of intangibility. No, this time it was a pure blunt force of information enough to quite thoroughly daze him. Orange eyes remained fixed on the messy mass of black hair that he had instantly wanted to neaten even though he knew that the endeavour would be entirely fruitless. He was walking out of a movie theatre with a group of at least 6 other people around him all talking and laughing brightly, but they all seemed to melt into nothing in front of the blondes’ eyes as he stared.  
It was a game. It was a deadly fucking game and every move they made had thrown their lives into a very, very unsteady balance. One step forward was a leap back, a stumble and then a plummet down into a cavern imbued with death and nightmares. Four of them, former friends now scattered to the winds. Their names and faces had each seemed inclined to remain permanently shrouded in mystery until that very moment, and now? Now he could recall it all. Every single experience was presenting itself in excruciatingly painful detail and for a few seconds he had the panicked impression that his mind was about to shut down on him, give out under the huge surge of pressure, the weight of such a great deal of formally unknown information seemed likely to be end of his tentative human grip on sanity. His vision blurred and his head swam, only reflexes quickened by long hours of martial arts training saved him from what would likely have been an embarrassing and probably painful experience in the form of an elegant drop to the pavement.

He was left almost doubled over, bracing himself against a grimy brick wall as he watched the familiar shock of black hair and broad shoulders walk away from him. He’d never seen Jake so grown up... and that thought filled him to the brim with a feeling of abject loss and emptiness. Why hadn’t he looked over? He should have looked over. He should have known. But in his heart Dirk knew that for the moment Jake most likely had no idea if he even existed. It would have saddened, but not surprised him if Jake utterly failed to have even the barest recollection of what they had been through to get here even if he had looked over and seen him. After all, even his own keen mind had only managed to catch at wisps and clutch at straws. His chest hurt.

That night he really couldn’t sleep.  No matter how he tried he simply couldn’t shut his mind down. It was full, too full. An extra 16 years had all but rammed their way into his memories and he was having some serious problems processing the deluge of information. It was like trying to download five huge programs and installing them while also playing another set of six or seven high graphic dependent games and capturing and uploading videos of the game-play all at the same time. It was basically a massive processor overload that was putting a great deal of strain on his poor human neural connections.  In the end he simply gave up, threw in the towel and called it quits all at once and dragged his tired as fuck body up and out of bed again. The only logical course of action? Hitting the coffee machine hard. If sandman wasn’t going to smack him in the face with a hefty dose of his magical sleeping sand tonight then he might as well see about keeping himself functional at the very least.

He didn’t have to worry about waking anyone up, he lived alone after all. The apartment was small but it suited his needs to perfection. A fair sized bedroom, a small bathroom with an intensely powerful shower, a living room-kitchen area with a table that would seat four [if he cared to remove his pet projects from where they covered the majority of it] in between the work surfaces and the sofa.  He was 25 and already quite well set to face the world. Of course he had family, most people did, but they weren’t really the overly controlling sort. Even his little brother was looking to break away from the red-light-district style family home and find his own place in the world. It was expected of them, they’d all been brought up to take care of themselves, and quite honestly Dirk felt he was doing a damn fucking good job of it.

It was one of those pet-projects he picked up now, it was nothing major, just a thing. A potentially rapping thing, which might have been a relatively lame undertaking in some people’s eyes, but there was a whole level of ironic awesome involved in the idea of being able to hold a rap off with something of his own creation. There was no telling if he’d get the project done, but as he had the time to work on it now he figured he might as well. That idea had the potential to work like a charm until the plans he was working from brought up flashbulb memories of exactly the same little bot from a life he was only now recalling the details of living. That pretty well put a damper on his creative mood. It was hard to focus on making something you felt like you’d already made. Hard... and kinda... really weird actually, there wasn’t much that freaked Dirk out, but even he was left feeling a little unsettled by his doppelgänger memory mash up. In the end he simply settled for clicking through shitty websites, looking at weird pictures, like a dog with boxing gloves on its legs, and watching some of the weirder stuff youtube could throw at him. That passed the time pretty well till he could justify finally getting up once again and going to get breakfast.

The next time he saw Jake, Dirk was at least prepared for the uprising of memories to hit him and thankfully it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the metaphorical mind grenade he’d had lobbed right into his brain cage the last time it had happened. This time it was more a gentle simmer to the surface of recollections the pair of them had shared; Conversations, irritations, frustrations, lamentations...and yet, under it all, happiness.

They had been happy, they had. They’d been friends despite the fall out that had come from initiating the death trap of a game, a death trap they themselves were never in a place to try and prevent. It was inevitable. The pair of them had been the closest of friends for years and way fucking more for a time till teenage stupidity wrecked the whole fucking thing up quicker than a Ferrari in a car crusher. He’d been smothering. He’d been too much, too quick, too intense, too full on. Too demanding and just too fucking hard to handle for someone who didn’t even really have the basest knowledge of how to function in a social situation, let alone a romantic one. But shit was he not the only one to blame. Jake had been avoidant, distant and stubborn, egocentric and un-empathic to a truly terrifying degree.  There had been very little chance at all for either of them to make things work. Jake never saw past his own issues into anyone else's and he certainly never saw the merits in asking. If they were presented he soon managed to turn things back to him and, well. That was really not the best personality type to be faced with when trying to manage a relationship. Especially when you add into the equation the avoidance once more. Generally it seemed pretty doomed from the get go. But that meant nothing just now.

He was certain that there were other things that had been thrown into the mix as well. Things which had worked to weight it further towards an utterly negative outcome, but from what he could now quite suddenly recall, it was no small wonder that the four of them were a collection of socially retarded fuck ups. It wasn’t as if any of them really had what you’d call a normal life. Jane came closest, and for the most part she also seemed the most well adjusted, with Roxy as well who must have just been some kind of miracle girl, to hold it all together as well as she did. You know... alcohol aside. It all felt like some kind of deranged fever dream; the imaginings of a mind rife with delusion, delirium and self derision. How could something this fantastical ever prove to be real? But yet... a part of him really knew it was. Another part of him had already worked at trying to track down Jane and Roxy. They were alive, well and living very separate lives. He had toyed with the idea of stepping into their lives, crashing through the glass house of naivety that currently kept them protected from onslaught of a past they certainly didn't recall... but for now he had held himself back. It was foolish to engage in any course of action without being fully aware of how you should go about handling it after all. Was it worth ruing the peace they both still had? Mm. Maybe one day. But for now, no. 

This second time he saw Jake was some two weeks later. It was fairly miserable day in all honesty and he was out shopping. He wasn’t in the market for anything interesting sadly, the whole thing was of a nature far more necessary. Food and the like needed to bought in after all, even if he did have something of a take-out habit. It was never a bad thing to have a sizable stack of instant meals in the freezer and dried food and non perishables in the cupboards. Things in cans were a godsend when you couldn’t raise yourself above the level of depressingly apathetic about cooking something of an evening, and noodles could never be argued with, no matter how energized you were feeling about whipping up some manner of culinary masterpiece. Not that he ever really felt that energized about cooking. As long as it filled you up and kept you going what the hell did it matter really? So long as it was edible and at least vaguely palatable he would eat it.

The supermarket however was certainly not his favourite place to go. It was invariably packed, full of doddering elderly pensioners who always seemed to have this magical gift to be exactly where you needed to be and parents with very, very shrilly screaming children. Seriously. If someone could harness the sonic capabilities of a screaming 2 year old and turn it into some kind of sound based weapon? Well damn. Whoever opposed them would be a few hundred leagues of fucked.

It didn’t take him too long to whisk himself around the store regardless of the legions of the inane that seemed intent on preventing him getting the task done in a reasonable amount of time, he was the master of the duck and dodge. It wasn't until he was up at the cashier, with half of his shopping already bagged and the rest still on the conveyor that he actually took the time to really look around him. Bagging was a pretty mindless task anyway.  He had lifted a hand up to his mouth and was catching at one of his nails with his front teeth when there it was. There was that surge of recollection... that sudden dropping out of his stomach. The shock of messy black hair. Jake.

He was stood at a till some 6 rows down from Dirk, his shopping already bagged up and retrieving his card from the machine. There was a  bright smile on his face and he seemed to be having a perfectly cheerful conversation with the cashier. Dirk couldn't tear his eyes away from him. Memories assaulted his mind like waves before a storm, lashing and whipping at it, climbing higher and higher, washing over more of the jumbled expanse of his thoughts and drowning out an ever increasing amount of his senses. He could feel that dark hair under his fingers. He could feel the rough skin of Jake’s hand curling around his palm. The feel of his breath on his lips, the warm sensation of being so close to someone... he could practically feel Jake. The world around him now almost seemed to be melting away.

‘Come on...’ Dirk silently willed him, for some reason feeling quite unable to say the words aloud. ‘Jake come on. I’m right here.’ His eyes were locked on the other young looking man, hidden as they were behind his shades. ‘I’m right here. Why aren't you looking? Can’t you tell I'm here?’ Jake was moving to pick up his bags then, his back still to Dirk who felt a huge bubble of loss and grief well up within him. ‘Jake! Jake come on! You know me! You know me. Just look at me. Look at me and tell me you know me...’ Not a single word slipped past his lips as he watched Jake walking away, the pile of his own shopping building up to the point the cashier had to stop scanning and sat there giving him a look which was partly irked and partly perplexed. What was the strange blonde man even doing...? What was he looking at?

Dirk’s eyes didn’t leave Jake even as he reached the exit doors, however he did start packing again and quite honestly with some speed. Why hadn’t he spoken out? What was the problem? The problem... The problem was being noticed of course. Of having everyone stare while he made a fool of himself. That wasn’t him. That wasn’t what he did. He didn’t operate in the open like that. Certainly not when there was the horrific and damning chance that Jake would look at him with nothing but confusion in those amazingly green eyes of his. No recollection. No knowledge of who he was. Nothing.  Just confusion as to how a total stranger would know his name, and why he would come rushing up to him. He couldn’t face that. The very thought made his stomach twist up uncomfortably. He needed to think this through. He needed to come up with plan, a guide, something to make sure he could keep any potentially collateral damaged in check and to an absolute minimum. He needed to know what he was dealing with more or less exactly before he tried to address it with any real intent. 

In a very, very different manner to Jake he finished packing up and then proceeded to pay in silence. He left the shop as quickly as he could, intending to simply go and find his car but hoping for another chance... sadly however, there was no sign of Jake anywhere. The bubble inside him burst and the feelings wasted no time in washing over him completely. The expansive parking lot had swallowed him up more effectively than a dropped grain of sand on a beach. Dirk didn’t stop berating himself for his silence, his cowardice, his fear the entire way home. 

How could he have been so stupid? Why should it matter what the world thought of him? Why was he so intent on hiding from it? Because that was the way he had always had been. Because when he was around large groups of people they did nothing but make him uncomfortable. He disliked the moment when anyone about you turned, looked on and listened to your conversations. That always left him with a distinct feeling of displeasure. At the end of the day there was no one who could ever claim he was anything even vaguely resembling a fan of public speaking. He was nothing of the sort. He didn’t like the limelight, nor did he want it.

The days which followed left him feeling very low, stuck well and truly in the mindset of failure that the not quite encounter at the supermarket had left him with. The knowledge he now had was a heavy, disheartening burden to bear alone and he had utterly no idea who else he could speak to about it. Jane and Roxy were still both utterly unknown to him, and he still didn't feel quite equipped to go and seek them out, the same fear of blankness, a lack of recollection and possibly even irritation held him back. Soon, one day soon. He would pull a plan together and find a way to handle this with a high percentage chance for success. 

After the days began to melt into weeks, which slowly melted into first one month and then two Dirk was honestly beginning to find himself despairing of the chance of seeing Jake again. What if he had only been there for a visit? Dropping by for a month or something? Staying with friends? The shopping trip could simply have been a favour in return for the kindness of their hospitality. It would certainly be a relatively acceptable manner of repaying a friend without outright offering monetary compensation. It seemed logical. Depressingly logical, how on earth could he do anything about it however, if that did turn out to be the case? He couldn’t. Not really. If Jake had only been here for a visit, then chances were he now had a very slim chance of working out where he had now spirited himself off to. His mood was bleak. 

It was Sunday. The day was chilly but bright enough and Dirk had decided at about half past four in the afternoon that it was time to take a break from his tinkering with this and that and actually get a little fresh air. Little did he know that that simple decision was the precursor and in fact the opening act of one of the best days of his life, not the best, no, but one of them.  
   
The air was cool and fresh, it chilled his cheeks slightly but also did wonders at blowing the cobwebs from his mind. He had not been idle, no indeed, he'd been decidedly creative in fact, but that didn't detract from the fact he had been rather sedentary. There was honestly no finer way either, to leave him feeling a little slower than usual. The chill air was doing wonders for waking him up however. He rounded a corner a few streets away from the cinema where he had first seen Jake when he found himself stopping dead in his tracks once again. About 20 metres down the road there was a bus stop. The shadow of one of the numerous tall buildings was currently falling darkly over it but that did nothing to prevent Dirk's eyes falling on that self same head of messy black hair and the same rather bucktoothed smile. 

Two months. It had been two months. Over eight weeks of thinking that Jake was gone, gone and vanished to the winds never to come back, but no. Here he was. He was barely any distance away, laughing and smiling at the same group Dirk had seen him with before. Maybe he did work here?Maybe they all worked together? His eyes flicked around him once and came to rest on the movie theatre. Films. Of course... It was so simple! So simple it almost hurt that he'd not thought about it before! Where else would Jake English want to work after all than as close to his beloved cinematography as was humanly possible? Dirk felt twenty times the idiot for not seeing it before. 

Within seconds however he was watching Jake leave once more. His eyes had flicked back from the cinema itself to see a bus pull up at the stop and Jake and his group of friends or colleagues, whatever they were, embarking at once. Still laughing, still smiling. Still utterly distracting Jake from the world around him. Not that that had ever been an especially difficult task. That thought brought a rueful smile to Dirk's face. Sometimes the memories weren't so bad. He could still all but feel hear and smell Jake... but it didn't hurt as much this time. Jake was still here. He wasn't going to lose him completely again and sink himself into the necessity of searching. He was still in the city and that meant there was still a chance, a very good chance. A very good chance that he could speak to him alone. At that very moment Dirk swore to himself that he wouldn't let another opportunity slip by him uncaught. 

It came within a week. That beautiful, perfect day with it's glowing, golden opportunity. It was brightly sunny. Warm as well in comparison to the days which had passed before, a light jacket, open over his t-shirt was enough to keep him warm. It was close to six and Dirk was walking to the gym. His car had a puncture, ironic for the vehicle of a mechanic, but such was life. He could have fixed it, sure, but he'd quite simply not had time do so that morning. It didn't matter though, no rain had fallen and thankfully his boss was a friend so being late earned him very little retribution. The day had passed swiftly enough. They were busy and busy days were always better than slow ones. Slow ones dragged on and seemed to last a life time, where as when he was Busy Dirk had very little chance to urge time to past faster so he could return home to continue his brooding and over thinking. Of course since the week previous his mood had taken a significant and notable turn for the better, but regardless... it was still not what it could have been, not that he had ever exactly been a socially illuminating individual. 

He was rounding exactly the same corner as he had been before and of course his eyes habitually trained themselves on the bus stop, flicking away a second later only to double back almost instantly. Dirk froze again, standing stock still in the middle of the pavement. He was there. Son of a fucking bitch he was there! Jake was simply sitting on the plastic bench with his eyes trained up the road. There was no one there with him either, he was all alone. Not a soul stood at the stop despite the usually busy hour. In all honesty the blonde could hardly believe it and was tempted to give in just once and pinch himself to check he was actually really awake. He resisted the urge however. Just about.

For a long moment he stood there, staring. Transfixed and terrified by the scene all at the same time. He wanted to go over more than anything. Almost more than he wanted to continue breathing. But he was holding himself back. The imagined look of blank confusion still haunted him, and it was all the more real now for his being faced with a chance to confirm it as the most probably outcome. Negative? Dirk? Never. 

He shook the stupor away however, issuing himself with a sharp internal berating. He'd promised. He'd promised himself that he wouldn't do this. That he wouldn't falter. That he wouldn't back down from this challenge and he chastised himself harshly for almost giving into the temptation. Was he a coward? No. No he fucking wasn't. Not now, nor had he ever been. He steeled his nerve then, forcing himself to take a step, then a second and a third after that, despite the fact that his legs felt as if they were walking through treacle. It shouldn't be this hard. It shouldn't be that much of a risk. He himself... Well. He had never had anything really to do with Jake, had he? Not in this life... It was amazing how much his memories had offered up for him to lose, and how much of it all relied on Jake. What if he didn't wish to recall? What if he'd buried it deeper that Dirk had managed to? Too deep maybe? What if... There were too many what ifs. Fuck! Fuck, that was a bus! Fuck!

Not allowing himself to linger in doubt even a moment longer, Dirk strode over towards the bus stop and stepped under it. Jake had risen to his feet, swung his bag over his shoulder and was moving to place himself directly in front of where the bus's door was beginning to open. Dirk reached out a hand to catch a hold of the back of the vibrant green shirt he was wearing, holding the fabric tightly scrunched in his fingers and giving it a sharp pull, catching the black haired mans attention and causing him to turn around, a look of slight irritation on his face as he opened his mouth. Hesitation was a thing of the past, old news, ancient history. He had this. Dirk held out his hand then, cutting Jake's attempt to question him off with a brief remark of his own in a clipped tone. He was nervous. It made him want to talk a great deal more than was needed, so he cut himself short. Reigned himself in.

“Jake. I'm Dirk. How're things?” What if this went wrong? What if he'd made some kind of horrible miscalculation? What if Jake didn't remember?

“Dirk...”

It was such a relief to see in those bright green eyes the same shock of knowledge and recollection that had filled his own. It all but shone out of his face the moment their eyes met. Jake had lifted a hand as well, an automatic gesture and his fingers slowly reached out for Dirk's. He was stunned. Silent. But it was clear from the look on his face that everything was slowly but surely falling back into place. Green held orange, fear, wonder and remembrance reflected in both as without either of them noticing, the bus pulled away.

**Author's Note:**

>   
>    
>  _Art by[akitsu-47](http://akitsu-47.tumblr.com)._   
> 


End file.
